fozzy@mips.bhpese.oz.au (Andrew Steele) (05/31/91)
To all the Mac PS gurus...
SETUP:
Macintosh with Modem port connected to a Terminal server.
LaserWriter Chooser v5.2.
AIM:
Print Mac documents out on a Postscript LaserPrinter connected to a Unix Box.
THE STORY SO FAR:
Fetched the following files from sumex-aim:
"unix/macps-22.shar"
"tips/generating-postscript.txt".
Used Command-K to create a postscript file with the laserprep
stuff in it.
Sent this file up to our Mips Unix box.
Ran prepfix on this file to produce the modified laserprep file.
Followed the directions to create a chooser document that will send the
data out the modem port.
Set up our the terminal port to send the data from it to a file.
Ran macps on this file and send this off to our laserprinter.
(Aside:
Sending to our laserprinter actually involves mailing it across
to one of our Vaxes, extracting it to a file, removing the header
stuff and then printing it. It sounds complex but it works, at least
up until now it has. )
PROBLEM:
When I print out the file I get back an error that it can't find the mark
for a cleartomark call.
IDEAS??
thanx
--
Andrew STEELE BHP Information Technology, Newcastle, NSW, Australia.
INTERNET: fozzy@bhpese.oz.au PHONE: +61 49 402133
"All that is required for evil to triumph, is for good people to do nothing"
--
Andrew STEELE BHP Information Technology, Newcastle, NSW, Australia.
INTERNET: fozzy@bhpese.oz.au PHONE: +61 49 402133
"All that is required for evil to triumph, is for good people to do nothing"gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies) (06/01/91)
I get so many requests for this information that I am posting it
again.
If you are having trouble printing postscript on a non-apple printer,
with laserwriter drivers 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, or 6.1, then read onward.
This file is called "imagen-postscript.txt" lives in the directory
[sumex]<info-mac>tips>. Good luck! -- Don Gillies
---------------------------- cut here ------------------------
I posed a question in these newsgroups on March 23, asking how to
get postscript files prepared on a Mac, to print properly on an
Imagen 2308S running 4.0 software with Ultrascript. This posting
provides the solutions that were suggested by Imagen software support,
and several net readers. If you have a laserwriter, you need not
modify the laser prep at all. However, if you have a non-Apple
printer (such as imagen, or something else), read onward.
The problem in printing is in the dictionary provided by Apple. The
result of doing an option-K on your Mac, just after clicking on OK in
the print dialogue box, is a postscript file which contains Apple's
postscript dictionary, followed by the output of the application you
created a drawing with. The dictionary, which is the header of the
file, looks like:
%!
%%Title: "Laser Prep -- The Apple PostScript Dictionary (md)"
%%Creator: Apple Software Engineering
%%CreationDate: Thursday, March 19, 1987
%{appledict version #68 0
% (c) CopyRight Apple Computer, Inc. 1984,1985,1986,1987,1988 All Rights Reserved.
%%EndComments
%%BeginProcSet: "(AppleDict md)" 68 0
.
.
.
%%EndProcSet
%%EOF
There are two ways of dealing with this problem. The first and
definitely the simplest, is simply to use Imagen's Apple compatibility
dictionary corresponding to the version of LaserPrep your Mac puts
out. For LaserPrep 5.2, that means replacing the entire dictionary
shown above with the two lines:
%!
(dictv52.ps)run
"dictv5.ps", "dictv51.ps", and "dictv52.ps" are postscript dictionaries
which Imagen provides on their hard disk; you can use your Imagen disk
manager program to verify they're there.
The second (and more involved) way of dealing with the problem, is to
fixup Apple's dictionary. If you have a non-Imagen, or non-Apple
Laserwriter, then use this method. Two fixups are needed. The first
fixup is at approximately line 9 of the dictionary, which reads:
statusdict begin waittimeout 300 lt{0 60 300 setdefaulttimeouts}if end
This line attempts to set "statusdict" operators that are normally
protected, which results in an "invalidaccess" error on Imagen.
(I presume the LaserWriter must be executing something behind our
backs to get this to work as is.)
To fix it, either (1) place a "serverdict begin <password> exitserver"
command before the above line, or (2) comment out the above line by
placing a '%' before it.
The second needed fixup is at approximately lines 10 & 11 of the
dictionary. Get rid the lines of the strings "//setrealdevice" and
"//execjob". I suggest you delete these strings (along with their
line termination character, either a carriage return (^M, ASCII 015)
if the file was uploaded in raw/binary mode, or newline (^J, return
key on UNIX, ASCII 012) if the file was uploaded in text translation
mode. Or you can comment them out: prepend a '%' (indicates comments)
to each command and append and appropriate ^J or ^M, depending on what
is terminating the rest of the lines in the file.
(No, I don't know what "setrealdevice" and "execjob" do, they aren't
in Adobe's ps ref manual, appendix D.6 - SYSTEM PARAMETERS. Must be
Apple-specific stuff. If you know, please tell me too.)
I should probably mention that several persons pointed me at host
sumex-aim.stanford.edu, which contains contributed programs for the
Mac. Specifically, they suggested that I look at "macps-prepfix.shar",
which contains programs "macps" and "prepfix", one of whose functions
is to prepend a standard Apple dictionary to a postscript program
on a unix host, before sending it to a LaserWriter. These programs
aren't very useful with an Imagen, as it's a lot easier just to add
that "(dictv52.ps)run" command to your postscript files, before spooling
them to Imagen.
******
I should probably also mention that one of the first problems we
encountered with postscript on our Imagens, had to do with
"invalidaccess" error messages not related to the above dictionary
problems. Imagen already had a fix for this, which involves downloading
two files to your hard disk, "2020.ps" and "startup.ps", which change
some systemdict parameters ... related to memory allocation, I believe.
If you have an Imagen, plan on doing much future postscript work,
and haven't yet applied this fix, you can get it by calling Imagen or
e-mailing me.
--
--------
Ed Arnold * NCAR (Nat'l Center for Atmospheric Research) * Mesa Lab
PO Box 3000 * Boulder, CO 80307-3000 * 303-497-1253(w) * 303-494-6949(h)
era@ncar.ucar.edu (128.117.64.4) * {ames,gatech,noao,...}!ncar!era
-- gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (Don Gillies) (06/05/91)
Make sure that your postscript file does not ask for fonts absent from your printer. I spent two days trying to figure out why my mac postscript file wouldn't print on a laserwriter NTX, until I realized the mac file had New Century Schoolbook fonts, while the laserwriter --